Thursday, March 05, 2009

A Liberal leader's political cynicism

From a slavish column in the National Post by Michael Ignatieff, a former supporter of human rights:

The CUPE Ontario resolution passed last week to boycott Israeli academics is an unacceptable violation of academic freedom....The CUPE resolution is an attack on the free exchange that is at the heart of our university system.

The Liberal Party of Canada condemns the CUPE resolution in the strongest possible terms. I salute the others who have spoken out against the resolution, including my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the House of Commons, and CUPE’s national president, Paul Moist, who has refused to support the resolution.

The resolution, in fact, referred specifically to joint academic undertakings in weapons research. That Paul Moist would back away from such a relatively innocuous resolution by university sector CUPE members in Ontario speaks volumes about his own commitment, as CUPE National President, to social justice and equality. That Bernie Farber joins with Meir Weinstein of the Kahanist Jewish Defence League to denounce any such thing as "anti-Semitic" robs that term of any scrap of meaning it might have retained up to this point.

And now Iggy speaks, knowing that he'll gain more votes than he loses by stealing the pro-Israel card from the Conservatives. Meanwhile, Israeli weapons experiments on live human beings will no doubt continue. Should they do so with our help?